Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I rise to express concern with a provision of H.R. 4404, the ``Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel Exercise Act of 2016'', as amended. Although I appreciate the intent of this legislation, I believe section 3 of the bill should be clarified to avoid unintended consequences. The Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Exercise Program (Program) tests and evaluates the Nation's preparedness goal, systems, plans and strategies for all hazards. The main objective of the Program is to examine and validate core capabilities to perform missions and functions that prevent, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards. All hazards include terrorist attacks. From the outcome of the exercises, we are able to determine the progress made in reaching the National Preparedness Goal. I am concerned because H.R. 4404 may be interpreted to mandate that the Program focus on emerging terrorist threats. On its face, the provision mandating that FEMA shall, to the extent practicable, design the Program to include emerging terrorist threats could be interpreted to limit FEMA's ability to design exercises for all hazards, instead requiring a specific scenario for Program exercises. I do not believe that this is Congress' intent and urge FEMA to interpret the bill broadly. Natural disasters cause devastating impacts to our citizens, communities, and the Nation as a whole. Each year, the Federal Government spends hundreds of millions of dollars (if not billions of dollars) responding to and recovering from weather-related events. The amount that the Federal Government spends on natural disasters is increasing as a percentage of our gross domestic product and as a percentage of the Federal budget. Being prepared for these events helps the Nation reduce injury, death, and property damage. We need to ensure that the National Exercise Program continues to test our preparedness for natural events. Similarly, testing our capabilities for emerging terrorist threats is a worthy endeavor. It should and already does occur. I do not believe that the intent of section 3 of the bill is that all Program exercises must include emerging terrorist threats. Rather, the bill provides that our capabilities to handle emerging terrorist threats can and should be tested within the Program. Any other interpretation would undermine the progress that the Nation has made to prepare for all hazards, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks. In addition, it should be noted that FEMA is already required, at least once every two years, to perform a national level exercise to test and evaluate the Nation's capability to detect, disrupt, and prevent threatened or actual catastrophic acts of terrorism, or to test and evaluate the readiness of governments to respond to and recover from catastrophic incidents. Both of these requirements can include exercises for emerging terrorist threats. As this bill moves to the other body, I hope that we can work together to clarify the purpose and intent of section 3 of this legislation.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. For those who persist in the fantasy that, someday, we will need to reinstate the draft, this legislation allows the President the authority to restore funding should he believe that such actions are in the interest of the national defense. Beyond that, the report, actually, from 1979, from the Selective Service, itself, said: We do not have the training capacity of the old days of training, with broomsticks, the young troops to go into war. Today, we have a professional military--the best in the world. If you believe in our military and if you believe in an all-volunteer force, then you will vote for this amendment. If you want to send a message that, someday, we are going to conscript young men, involuntarily, to go into the military, into a training capacity that doesn't exist, and have hundreds or thousands or millions of bodies, untrained, go into a massive land war, unlike the way wars are fought today with the professional military and much more targeted with drones and air strikes, then vote for this, say that we are going to go back to Korea, that we are going to go back to the way it was in World War II, that we are going to go back to World War I. If you believe we have entered into the 21st century and that we are never going to involuntarily conscript Americans to serve in the military again, the all-volunteer force is the best in the world. Yes, it needs to be the best trained and the best equipped. Let's focus on that. Let's spend $23 million on their training and on their equipment instead of wasting it on an obsolete system that penalizes young Americans under felony penalty if they don't register and register their changes of address. By the way, the Selective Service doesn't know where most people live. Their computers are obsolete, and they don't work. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 90 seconds. This bipartisan amendment would zero out funding for an obsolete, archaic system--the so-called Selective Service. Thirty-nine years ago, the Russians invaded Afghanistan. Jimmy Carter, in one of the moments of his rather pathetic Presidency, decided that we would send two symbols to the Russians: we wouldn't go to the Olympics, and we would reinstate registration for the draft despite the fact that his own Selective Service had just come up with a report showing that the need for Selective Service was obsolete and unnecessary. They tried to recall all of the reports. They didn't. Senator Mark Hatfield obtained one, and it was printed in the Congressional Record. The Selective Service, itself, decided its time was gone, but we reinstated it as a symbol of our opposition to the Russians. So here we are today, 39 years later, wasting $23 million a year in making every male American, at the age of 18, register for a draft that will never, ever again happen, under penalty of felony of law, of the deprivation of Federal assistance, of Federal jobs, and of other things--for life--if they fail to register. Yet we are still here tonight to defend it. The chairman will say: Well, we are going to study this. We are going to study it and decide whether or not we might still need this someday. Yet, of course, the Department of Defense, itself, says: We do not want a draft. We like to select highly qualified people for our all- volunteer military. In fact, in March, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said: ``The thing I'd like to say about the Selective Service System and the draft, generally, is this: We want to pick our own people. We don't want people to be forced to serve us.'' Yet the chairman of the committee will rise in a vain attempt to defend this wasteful system. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Coffman).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, on July 5, 2016, I missed votes due to personal business in my district and was unable to be present and missed the following votes: On Roll Call vote 343, I would have voted No. On Roll Call vote 344, I would have voted No. On Roll Call vote 345, I would have voted No. On Roll Call vote 346, I would have voted No. On Roll Call vote 347, I would have voted No. On Roll Call vote 348, I would have voted No. On Roll Call vote 349, I would have voted Aye. On Roll Call vote 350, I would have voted Aye.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, today, we are here to honor Colonel Guy T. Shields on his induction into the Army Public Affairs Hall of Fame, an honor deserving of a man who has dedicated his life to serving our country. Colonel Shields' accomplishments are many, and his time in the Army has been a story of passion, leadership, and innovation. For nearly twenty years he served in the Army as a Public Affairs Officer, and he established himself as a media relations expert. He was respected and trusted by all he worked with: internal and external media, his military superiors, his peers, and his subordinates. At the NATO Nuclear Planning Conference in 1987, he successfully established an international press center, and under his guidance a team was able to handle more than 200 members of the international media for four days. His success continued as he covered stories and events such as the 50th Anniversary of the Normandy Landings, Exercise Double Eagle, Operations Support Hope, Just Cause, Golden Pheasant, and Iraqi Freedom. While working in Bosnia he coordinated the construction and operation of a radio tower and taught a team who had never worked with the equipment before how to broadcast messages to the Bosnian people. He truly has done it all. Colonel Shields' time spent as an Army Public Affairs Officer set the standards for contingency public affairs operations for the Army and Joint Operations. Through his service, he set an example for contingency deployments worldwide in both peacetime and war. Every day I am grateful for the sacrifices and work that our service men and women do and Colonel Shields exemplifies both a dedication to our country as well as a model soldier with exceptional public affairs skills. I would like to join in congratulating him on this much deserved award.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding. Those watching or listening might be a little confused what this is about. It is about a meaningless piece of paper. It is called House Concurrent Resolution 112. It is expressing the sense of Congress that something that the President proposed is bad and they don't like it. Well, he proposed it and they are not going to take it up. Why are we wasting time debating something that they are not going to put on the schedule and isn't a reality? I don't know. Because they are trying to fill up time? It is not clear to me. What they are doing is continuing to avoid the discussion of how we are going to pay for America's infrastructure. Dwight David Eisenhower said, Let's have a user fee, a gas tax. The last time we increased the gas tax federally was 1993--18.4 cents a gallon. That figured out to be about 15 percent of every gallon you bought. I paid $2.50 a gallon in Oregon last weekend. The Federal tax is still 18.4 cents. That is about 7 percent per gallon, and those dollars are worth less. We are talking about what it is going to do to jobs if we have some sort of tax on oil that we use to pay for infrastructure. Let's talk about the other side where we can create one heck of a lot of jobs. Every penny for a gas tax, every penny, raises about $1.7 billion for the Federal trust fund. $1.7 billion, under the most conservative estimates, most conservative, is more than 25,000 jobs. So one penny, 25,000 jobs. But, no, we can't go there. I proposed we index the existing gas tax to inflation. No, we can't do that. All right. Didn't want to do that. I proposed that we tax the fraction of a barrel of oil that goes into taxable transportation uses, not manufacturing, not agriculture, not any of this other stuff that they are talking about. I put that proposal forward 7 years ago. I put it forward to my colleagues and to the White House. Now, the White House has burped out something different here--this more indiscriminate tax--which would go to other uses. The point is that there are thoughtful ways to approach this and pay for what we need. America is falling apart. 140,000 bridges nationwide--including the highest proportion in the State of Pennsylvania, by the way, which we heard from earlier--are in need of replacement or significant repair. Trucks are detouring around them. People are being detoured around them. There are potholed roads. Forty percent of the national highway system needs not just to be resurfaced, it needs to be dug up it has failed so badly. People are breaking their rims, blowing out tires, and damaging their cars. It is costing Americans a lot. People are locked in congestion because we are not dealing with the growth in traffic. And, oh, let's just look out just a little way outside the capital here to the worst example. We are killing people, killing people, on our transit systems unnecessarily because Congress has failed to partner with the cities of America and the rural areas who have transit. We have an $84 billion backlog to bring transit up to a state of good repair, not new transit options to get people out of their cars and help them deal with congestion to get around. $84 billion just so we are not killing people. And we are talking about, oh, we can't be competitive. Yeah, we are not competitive in the world economy. I go around talking about how we are now degraded. We used to have an infrastructure that was the envy of the world. And I talked about how we are becoming Third World. My colleague from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) criticized me very, very adamantly about that one day. I said, What do you mean, Earl, you know how bad it is? He said, No, no, that is insulting to Third World countries. They are investing a larger percentage of their gross domestic product in infrastructure than we are here in the United States of America. And that is true. So now I have taken to calling us Fourth World. We used to be the world's leader in infrastructure, and now we are vaulting over everybody, including places like Zimbabwe, to the back of the pack. Give me a break.

Mr. DeFAZIO. And where is the discussion? It is no, no, no. No, can't have a barrel tax. No, can't increase the gas tax. No, can't index the gas tax. Oh, but we want to talk about a user fee. What user fee? Why are we wasting time on this? You are not going to bring it up. You are in charge. You set the agenda. Why are we passing a bill to say we are not going to take something up? I would be kind of embarrassed if I was in the majority and that is what I was wasting time on while people are trapped in traffic, while people are dying, because we can't maintain our transit systems. People are blowing out tires because we can't repair the roads. And, oh, we are all for infrastructure until it comes to paying for it. We passed a 5-year bill. We paid for it with phony money. We pretended that when we have private tax collection, that it will make money--private tax collection. Republicans have passed that twice before. It kind of pissed off the American people. And guess what, it lost money each time, and then we put it back in the IRS. But, no, this time it is going to make money and we are going to use it and pay for infrastructure. Give me a break. And the Federal Reserve makes that money and puts it in a reserve account with a computer. Let's take that money and spend it. Basically, you are just averting the real problem here, which is we need to have a serious discussion about how we are going to pay to build America's infrastructure and become a world leader again and be the envy of the world again.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, it would put a small fee on operators of underground storage tanks that would help to support the safety programs. I would say with respect to funding, the bill is funded at current baseline levels. We should have provided them additional funds to carry out their numerous pipeline safety missions, but unfortunately, we couldn't reach bipartisan agreement on providing additional resources. This bill does, however, increase grants to States to help them carry out their intrastate pipeline safety programs. It reauthorizes funding for pipeline safety information grants to communities, which are important to my constituents. There are pipelines in places that no one is aware. There is one that runs down the middle of the Willamette Valley, all the way down, that supplies the Eugene Airport and a storage facility down in Eugene. A number of years ago, there was a news story, like: what pipeline? There are new developments going in. The signs are buried under blackberry bushes, and people aren't aware of these things. So we have to make certain those pipelines are safe. The new provisions for coastal areas are absolutely critical to make sure those are maintained at the highest standard and built to the highest standard in other critical resource areas. All in all, I congratulate my colleagues and recommend this bill.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Protecting our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety Act, the PIPES bill. I thank the chairmen of the subcommittee, the full committee, and also the members of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Representative Mike Capuano, and members of the Energy and Commerce Committee on our side. This is a good bipartisan product, something that is pretty rare around here these days. It reauthorizes the Department of Transportation's pipeline safety program for 4 years and includes a number of important measures that will better protect our communities, ensuring that pipelines are a safe means to transport natural gas, hazardous liquids, and crude oil. Most importantly, this bill gives the Secretary of Transportation new emergency order authority to impose certain emergency restrictions and safety measures on pipeline operators to address an imminent hazard resulting from an incident or an unsafe practice, which is authority that doesn't currently exist. Here is a good example. Fairly recently, we had a defective pipeline from China. We shouldn't be buying pipeline from China. But anyway, we had some defective, junky Chinese product pipeline, and there was an incident. But the administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Safety Materials Agency does not have the authority to order a nationwide inspection or removal of an imminent hazard, i.e., defective Chinese pipeline. All they could do was voluntary guidance. Now, we will have emergency order authority. Some were concerned that they would use this as a way to end-run the regulatory process on other matters that are not an imminent hazard to health and safety, and there are provisions in the bill that would prevent that. We are also pushing them to complete the mandates of the last bill, 2011, a bipartisan bill, where they have 16 mandates that Congress required that we felt were needed and prudent. And they are not through the regulatory process as yet. So we are moving them forward on that, and hopefully, the trolls down at the Office of Management and Budget who hold these things up--hello, do you live near a pipeline--that they will get the message and they will get these vital provisions that have been too long delayed. It gives Federal, State, and emergency local responders MSDS sheets, safety sheets, so we know what the oil is. We have had past spills where we couldn't figure out what they were dealing with for days, and that is not acceptable. It gives the agency the authority to have standards for underground natural gas storage facilities, but it allows States like Oregon, which has seven of these, to go above those standards so that the States can better protect their citizens.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. So the current state, there is nothing going on here except this sort of myth that this is a huge impediment to agricultural practices in this country. This is being pushed by the Farm Bureau. There is joint jurisdiction between the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Committee on Agriculture. The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, despite this bill being on the floor five times, has held zero--zero; count them, zero--hearings on this issue. We wouldn't want to hear from experts. There was a joint hearing with the Committee on Agriculture. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to have a witness. Only the pro- reform, so-called repeal pesticide-herbicide, witnesses were allowed to testify. There has been no deliberation on this issue. There is a great mythology around it. It is a very sad day to use a potential national health crisis to put through a lame bill that has gone through five times, which isn't going to pass the Senate. If it did, it will be vetoed.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. First off, we have to give the chairman a report card, and I am going to give him an A-plus for persistence. This is the fifth time this legislation will have been on the floor of this House. Of course, it is threatened by a veto should it ever pass the Senate, but it won't, so A-plus for persistence. I will give him an A for creativity because this is the same bill five times under four different guises. First it was for West Nile. Okay. Then it was the Pest Management and Fire Suppression Flexibility Act. So when we had West Nile, they called it a West Nile bill. When we were having a bad fire year, they called it a Fire Suppression Flexibility Act. Then they were honest, and they said it is the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act, the piece of paper, the report you have to file after you apply the pesticides. So at least that was, from their side, honest. But then now it is the Zika Vector Control Act, renamed 2 weeks ago. Zika is a serious problem. Of course, on their side, they are refusing to put forward an adequate budget to partner with communities who want to do mosquito reduction and control efforts, but that is a story for another day, and it is a different committee. But that would be a real thing we could do. Here are a couple of points. Zika is very bad for pregnant women and is also implicated in Guillain-Barre syndrome in both males and females and other potential links to other diseases. Really, really bad stuff. We have to get ahead of it. We also know that pesticides and herbicides are bad for pregnant women. So is the current state of affairs such that vector control districts can't go out right now today and apply pesticides to deal with a potential Zika with tiger mosquitoes and Aedes aegypti? No. Actually, they can. Under the law, they can go out and apply whatever they think would be effective. They just need, within 30 days, to send a form--a form, a piece of paper--available online to the EPA saying what they applied and where they applied it. Now, why would we care about that? Well, because we are worried about loading up drinking water with stuff that is harmful to pregnant women and to babies and to other living things, just like the 90,000 steelhead that were killed in my district. All we are saying is we would like to keep track, and then when we see certain concentrations in certain areas, we will actually test the water. Your local water authority does not routinely test--for the most part, very few--for pesticides and herbicides, but if they knew a bunch had been dumped upstream, they might want to do that, or the EPA might want to follow up and do some testing. So what we are saying is we don't want to know. We don't want to know what, where, how this stuff was applied. Now, the horrible burden of submitting an online form, this horrible, horrible, horrible burden has led to: No, well, we heard last time there may have been an aerial applicator who didn't apply something because of this regulatory burden, or maybe because they had misapplied it, or maybe the wind was blowing too hard. Who knows? We don't know. That was one anecdotal report. But from the 50 States assembled and the EPA, there are no documented instances of delays or prevention of necessary application of pesticides or herbicides because of the reporting requirement to EPA so we will know what, when, where, and how this stuff was applied. So the gentleman gets an A-plus for persistence, an A for creativity, but, unfortunately, a D for dangerous in terms of what this legislation would lead to. I include in the Record the Statement of Administration Policy. I will put the whole thing in the Record, but the administration does not agree with that truncated quote talking about how important this is or something from someone at EPA. ``H.R. 897 would weaken environmental protections under the Clean Water Act by exempting pesticide spraying from the currently required pesticide general permit.'' General permit. ``Creating a new statutory exemption to the permit is unnecessary'' because the permit itself ``was explicitly crafted to allow immediate responses to declared pest emergencies, thereby allowing vector control methods to be applied to the possible influx of disease-carrying mosquitoes.'' Statement of Administration Policy H.R. 897--Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act of 2015--Rep. Gibbs, R-OH, and two cosponsors The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 897, Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act of 2015, recently rebranded as the Zika Vector Control Act. H.R. 897 would weaken environmental protections under the Clean Water Act by exempting pesticide spraying from the currently required Pesticide General Permit. Creating a new statutory exemption to the Permit is unnecessary, as it was explicitly crafted to allow immediate responses to declared pest emergencies, thereby allowing vector control methods to be applied to the possible influx of disease-carrying mosquitos. In fact, most mosquito control districts and Federal and State agencies already have authority under the Pesticide General Permit to apply mosquitocides as needed to respond to Zika virus concerns and do not require any additional authorization under the Permit. In rare circumstances where a mosquito control district did not seek prior coverage under the Permit, emergency provisions of the Permit are available that allow instant authorization to spray without the need for prior notification. The Administration is committed to taking necessary steps, as quickly as possible, to protect the American people from the Zika virus. Rebranding legislation that removes important Clean Water Act protections for public health and water quality is not an appropriate avenue for addressing the serious threat to the Nation that the Zika virus poses.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, as I speak here today on the comfortable and uncrowded floor of the House of Representatives, all across America, people are standing in lines like cattle, waiting 60 minutes, 90 minutes, sometimes longer, missing their flights to get through airport security. It didn't have to be this way. We do a lot of things around here that are kind of not quite on the up-and-up, and one of them was a deal at the end of 2013 December, essentially when Americans are celebrating the holidays and not paying a lot of attention. Congress cut one of those year-end budget deals to fund the whole government and theoretically reduce the deficit. Now, my friends on the Republican side are totally averse to dealing with the deficit through any sort of revenues: can't raise revenues, can't make hedge fund managers on Wall Street pay taxes like other Americans because that would be bad; can't deal with overseas loopholes, corporations reincorporating in tax havens so they won't have to pay money here, even though they are based here and operate here. We can't deal with any of those issues. They snuck into that bill a little fee, yeah, just a little tiny fee. They raised the fee for aviation security. So why are things so bad today? If they just raised the fee in December of 2013, raising an extra $1.2 billion--B, as in billion--a year for aviation security, why are the lines so long? Well, guess what. They raised the fee, and they diverted the money. So airline passengers are paying more for their tickets ostensibly for aviation security to keep them safe and maybe to mitigate some of their inconvenience of standing in line, but the Republican majority chose to divert that money to deficit reduction and other things--$1.25 billion dollars this year. Now, I heard the head of the union for the screeners on the radio this morning. He said we need 6,000 more workers. And they said, well, God, how much is that going to cost? Six thousand, how could you possibly afford that? Guess what. It would cost a heck of a lot less than $1.2 billion to hire 6,000 more screeners so Americans didn't have to stand in 2-hour lines and miss their flights. What is wrong with this place? Why can't we be on the up-and-up. If you raise a tax on people to pay for aviation security, both to make them safe and to make it more convenient and predictable, spend the money making it more safe, making it more convenient, and making it more predictable. Don't divert the money to illusory deficit reduction or other things around here. That is incredible. So all Congress has to do is say: Hmm--of course, I voted against the bill, but the large majority who did--we were wrong. We shouldn't have raised the fees on airline passengers. We shouldn't have diverted the money. We shouldn't have starved TSA from the funds they need to hire more people, both to deal with baggage and lines. Up above and below, we have got problems in both places with lack of staffing. Now, we will just blame the management of TSA. Oh, it is the management. It is the management. Don't look over here, because we are taxing the passengers and we are spending the money over here, not on security. That is why people are standing in line today. I hope this place gets honest and says: Let's change the law and let's spend the money, the taxes the passengers are paying, on aviation security and eliminate the excessive waits in lines.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman and additional 1 minute.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the horrible burden the gentleman is talking about is a notice of intent which says where and how something was applied. It is virtually cost free. You can use a standardized form. But it is just good to know where we are putting the pesticides and what pesticides are being used in case there are problems like the massive fish kill in Oregon, which we were able to trace back to one misapplication by one private company, not by the local county or any other public entity. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Napolitano).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Well, Groundhog Day came a month earlier this Congress. That is how I described this bill 2 years ago, July, because this is the third time that we have considered this bill. Now, we must admit the rationale has changed. Just last week--last week--it was named the Zika Control Act. But before that, it was the Regulatory Burden Removal Act. So the first time it was considered, it was H.R. 1749. That one, the 109th Congress defeated. That was for West Nile virus--whoops. Then H.R. 872, last Congress, Reducing the Regulation Burdens Act, at the request of the American Farm Bureau because of a huge burden; and now just renamed last week, we are going to try and game a very serious thing, which is the potential spread of Zika, for which the Republicans thus far have appropriated zero dollars to help the States--zero. Now we are going to pretend we are doing something here today about Zika. It is not about Zika. Now, this is pretty darn personal for me because the reason we have this rule is because of a huge, massive fish kill in Oregon--a misapplication of pesticide, an aquatic pesticide, into an irrigation canal. We are talking about applications in or near water. People drink water, fish swim in water, and other things are dependent upon water. We are talking about, no, we don't want to have the EPA watch the pesticide operators who are putting pesticides in or around water. They should not be allowed to do that. Now, 92,000 steelhead died in Oregon, and that was essentially the beginning of this rule. Now they are saying this is horribly burdensome. Well, first off, in my State, my one, little, isolated State, we have 825 miles of rivers that are showing a significant level of pesticides, 10,000 acres of lakes. Nationwide, it is hundreds of thousands of miles, tens of thousands of miles and hundreds of thousands of acres. We haven't been testing for pesticide residues in water, in drinking water, until very recently. But now we don't want to do that anymore. We don't want people to know. Let's just stop, because this is a horrible burden. Well, actually, not so much. This is controlled at two levels: the EPA and the States. Now, we just heard one anecdote about an aerial applicator in one State that just came up yesterday, unnamed, anecdotal, they suspended operations. Why? Who knows why? We don't know why. There are no facts behind it. But we should end the whole program nationwide because of one anecdote regarding one applicator who may have been misapplying it in Colorado. We don't know. So the committee asked the EPA and the States, how many people have complained and have had their operations interrupted? Interesting answer: zero and zero. The 50 States say zero, except we now hear about an anecdote in Colorado, and the EPA says zero. So now we are going to pretend this has something to do with Zika. This has nothing to do with Zika. It has to do with whether or not someone is going to misapply a pesticide that is going to get in your drinking water. Now, we should become kind of sensitive about drinking water after what happened in Michigan, but, nah, we don't care. Get rid of those stinking regulators. Don't worry. No one would ever misapply a pesticide. It won't get in your drinking water and won't kill fish-- even though it clearly did that in Oregon. So this is really a kind of transparent renaming and opportunistic approach to Zika. How about considering a real bill to put some real money to partner with the States to deal with this? By the way, they can spray wherever they want because of a declared emergency, so it is automatically covered. But we are going to pretend that somehow we are going to facilitate the spread of Zika if we don't wipe out the EPA's authority to keep pesticides out of our water. This has been defeated twice before. Even though it was creatively renamed in the last week, I would recommend that my colleagues oppose it yet again. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time remains on each side?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Maryland (Ms. Edwards).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott).